


Basketcase(ness)

by Carbocat



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Amnesia, Experiment!Steve Harrington, Experimentation, Hurt Steve Harrington, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Haircuts, Non-Consensual Touching, Post-MindFlayer!Billy, Post-Season/Series 03, Steve Harrington with Powers, Steve's power is basically the power of rainbows, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 20:02:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19383733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: They called it the facility and they said that they were taking care of him. They said don’t worry, and you’re safe here, and Brenner wants us to run a few more tests.They said, it’ll only hurt for a second.They said, it’s just a little shock.They said, bite down on this.The first time they cut his hair, he cried.





	Basketcase(ness)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even like reading fic where Steve has powers and yet, I decided to write this. 
> 
> Steve's power in this fic is pretty much that he can tell someone's intentions or what's going to happen based on colors that he sees in the corner of his eyes. 
> 
> I figured that if Steve was an experimented child and had been taken and adopted than his powers would be so subtle that he wouldn't really notice them at all or wouldn't think much of them. Especially if the colors faded after a while.
> 
> The color guide to his powers are:   
> Blue - surprise.   
> Purple - hurt/the intention to hurt  
> Green - sick/gross  
> Red - anger/danger  
> Orange - increasing anger  
> Yellow - safety/happiness  
> Black - death/Upside Down.

They called it the facility.

The word scratched uncomfortably at the back of his throat in the all-consuming way that words like _hurt,_ and _can’t breathe,_ and _run, run, run_ gagged him. The word rushed over him and blurred together with the phrase _still alive,_ and _buried_ , and _you’re not going to fucking believe this, Paul._

It tasted like copper on his lips, _facility._

It tasted spoiled.

Rotten.

Everything came to him in waves.

Consciousness was an ebb and flow of pain and confusion, lapping over his awareness with swimming nightmares and blinding bright lights in the corners of his eyes. It was a centrifuge of thought, disjointed feelings and indistinct locations.

He would blink, and the defining lines of new places were gone.

He would blink, and what he couldn’t make sense of before was receding back into dust.

Repeated. Replaced. Gone.

Everything was hazy at the corners of thought, slipping through his fingers. He’d grab hold of something. He’d find a place to stand in a thought or a dream, and then he’d lose the place, and the thought, and the dream.

All his memories were jumbled together and bubblegum sticky, coagulating into a mess of _things_ , and _stuff,_ and _nothing at all_ – the humid press of leather against the back of his neck, the hum of a Camaro through his fingertips, a sense of urgency.

An apology on the tip of his tongue. The sour taste of alcohol and bathroom soap in his mouth. The ache of fists pounding against his face on a ruined floor, on the ground of some alleyway, in an ice cream shop dressed in blue. The smell of gun smoke, of cheap cigarettes, of sweat.

Bright lights that flickered and faded from ruined places to places that were breathing and dark, and set on fire with gasoline.

There was a cracking over his head, something shattering. There was a hand in his hair and a yank so hard his neck felt _snapped_. There were teeth, and blood, and a pain jabbing into his neck.

He shouted, _listen to me._

He shouted, _Listen. To. Me. You have to get out of here, you have to go-_

He remembered that.

He was holding _something_ , facing _something_ , being crushed beneath concrete and shouting into someone else’s walkie-talkie that it was all coming down now, _you need to run, now!_

And then he wasn’t.

His hands were dirty, but empty. He wasn’t on his feet anymore. He wasn’t standing. He wasn’t crush. He wasn’t somewhere dark with something heavy on his chest and something lurking in the corners of his eyes.

He wasn’t calling for a help that could not come.

He was _here_.

At the _facility_.

There were lights above him, but they weren’t the pinpointed beams of flashlights, they weren’t the eerie green glow of _something_ or the flickering neon signs advertising jeans and New Coke. They were blinding and bright, and a steady white stream of purple hues blurred together as the word stood still and _he_ moved.

There was something soft beneath his head.

There were too many voices with too many things to say. There was blood in his eyes, in his throat. There was too much blood, and people were worried about where it was coming from.

There was a buzz in his ears and whispers that said get _him._ There were whispers that said they found _one_.

There was something on the tip of his tongue.

There was something important about the word _facility_.

Then there was a needle pressed against his bruised flesh and soft words telling him that it would be okay, telling him that he was home now. There were soft words saying, _welcome home._

Saying, _rest._

 

There was a buzzing at the edge of his awareness.

A little something, barely there, that was echoing at the ends of his consciousness. A consistent _thump_ , a light through a keyhole, a promise for fresh air that he did not want, but he followed it.

He crawled through the clouds and cotton, and the thick thicket of woolly thoughts. He forced himself awake, fighting through a haze and finding lights that were soft and dim, and fuzzy on the other side. There were purple spots at the center of his vision when he peeled his eyes open, a throbbing kind of _pain_ in violet that spread and then blinked away.

There was drug-induced heaviness in the curl of his fingertips, a bulkiness that felt unnatural and labored as he tried to lift his hand. He dropped it, letting the effort escape him.

His voice slurred like a Picasso painting, “Was t’ere a’ accident?”

The room was white.

His eyes traced patterns of tiny bursts of green, purple, red across white walls until the color settled in the corners of his eyes. He blinked slowly, heavy lids dropping down over his eyes and dragging back up, and the lights faded even from the corners.

He felt like he’d been asleep for a million years, but he couldn’t remember ever closing his eyes. He couldn’t remember anything that didn’t feel like the fleeting parts of someone else’s dream, and then he couldn’t remember that either.

“Hey,” He called out, voice slurred and slow, too loud and soupy as he pitched himself upwards and forward. The movement startled a harsh gasp from his lungs, flaring a pain up the inside of his chest as he slumped back into the sheets.

He swallowed hard.

Nausea rolled in his gut as he took shallow breath after shallow breath until it subsided, slipping away somewhere forgotten. He breathed out.

There were no windows in the room.

There wasn’t a clock or a radio, just the bed and the four walls, and the two guards standing in front of the only door. They contrasted the white around them with heavy dark tones of black and gray, seeping shades of green and red onto the floor.

They were just staring at him, standing there. Waiting.

He cleared his throat, but it didn’t help, “ _Hey._ ”

The tall guard had a badge pinned to his black Kevlar vest that said _Hawkins National Lab,_ that said _Paul Davis._ His hand dropped from the gun in his holster to the radio on his belt and he frowned. He tilted his head to the side and told the guard next to him with the orangey hair, “I’m going to radio this in so that _he_ knows. Keep an eye on the kid, McKinley.”

He watched the lights through the small opening in the door flicker green as Davis walked through it. He blinked his eyes and all that was left in the room was him, McKinley, and the color red. He blinked again, and the color was gone.

McKinley grinned the way that no one with a gun should. He readjusted his grip on his Glock, licking his tongue over his bottom lip in a way that was weird and familiar, but mostly weird.

His orange eyebrows pulled together, and he straightened his spine. He readjusted his grip on his gun again, like he was waiting for any excuse to pull it.  

For some reason, he thought about concrete and blue uniforms, about blue eyes and sharp teeth. His mind whispered against his ear, _leave._

It said, _get out._

_Facility. Run._

The words curled into his mouth like smoke, disappearing before he could really taste them. They pressed against his chest with a gentle hand and kissed the skin off his broken lips, taking hold of _something_ inside of him, but it was fleeting. It was gone.

His head hurt, and he was tired.

He let his eyes drift over the room, chasing shadows of faded colors from the door to the vent, to the white metal bars of the backboard. There was blood on the sheets where he must have chewed through his lip in his sleep. There was a bandage on his knee that already needed replaced, and a brace on his ankle, a cast on his arm.

He asked, “Was I hurt?”

The door was probably locked, but McKinley didn’t move.

They stood there and stared at each other like they expected something from one another. McKinley ignored the voices that poured in from his radio, asking if _the kid_ was lucid, if he was speaking. He didn’t take his hand from his gun, not even when Davis came back into the room.

He didn’t know what it was that he was supposed to _be_ that had them all so worried. He didn’t know what it was that they all thought that he apparently knew, but he felt too tired to be anything at all. He asked, “Did someone get hurt?”

He asked, “What happened?”

Davis had a bandage on his cheek that was tinted pink. He stayed where he was standing when McKinley took a step forward. He frowned as McKinley laughed incredulous and angry, stating with a humorless laugh, “A lot of people got hurt today, kid.”

Davis’ jaw got tight and his breath stilled but didn’t stop McKinley from stepping closer into the room. McKinley’s anger was explosive, a grenade losing its pin as it fell from his mouth, “Where is the girl?”

“What?”

“Do you know where you are right now?” He asked, not giving enough time for an answer. He stepped further into the room, voice pitched into a deadly soft even. It dripped _red_ , “Do you know what _you_ did, what you lost for us? I should you kill where you stand right now.”

“McKinley,” Davis snapped. He was clearly the higher ranked of the two, weathered the way that anger never was. He didn’t step forward and McKinley didn’t step back, reaching out and grabbing the collar of his hospital gown.

He yanked forward, nearly pulling him from the hospital bed, and pressed his Glock up under his chin. The cold metal dug in bruised skin and McKinley nearly _grinned_ as he demanded, “What’s your name?”

His mind was nothing but silk and water, and a hundred different things that were leaking fluids. He tried to concentrate on McKinley’s questions, on the threat, but pain was flaring red in the backs of his eyes. It was flashing caution signs as McKinley breathed cigarette breath and burnt coffee into his face, as he dragged him further off the bed so his ribs ached, “I’ll find your fucking family, and I’ll burn every last-“

He didn’t remember a girl.

When he tried to focus, he could almost hear the sound of feet walking above him. He thought that he kind of remembered how it felt to have concrete shift into your bones as people walked over it and the ticklish feeling of air against his knuckles. He thought that he could remember the same angry voice of the man in front of him, muffled through rocks, reminding everybody, _the order is to shoot on sight. No survivors_.

He thought that he remembered McKinley now, yanking his arm up through the rubble even though it was broken. He could remember brief glimpses of a gruff voice colored _blue_ with disbelief, “Paul, you gotta come fucking see this.

McKinley shook him hard and his sight went red, and then black, and then the hands were off him. The gun was gone. He stumbled back into the bed with a pained cry, words sounding broken as they fumbled out of his mouth, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He couldn’t remember a girl.

He could vaguely remember the outline of one. He could picture curly hair or wavy hair, blonde or brunette. He could imagine almond shaped eyes or big round saucers, blue or green. He could conjure the fleeting thought of delicate hands and blood in the center, but the thoughts _were_ fleeting.

And they were gone because he didn’t know a girl.

McKinley was angry, pushing back Davis with a sneer. Davis had a hand extended out, calm, “Not yet.”

“We need answers,” McKinley sneered. He shook roughly at his shoulders and shoved him back into the sheets, demanding, “Think, you moron. _Think_. Where is the girl, idiot?”

_You’re an idiot…_

“That’s more than enough.”

The doctor in the doorway had a voice that sliced the room in half, puncturing the intensity and letting it deflate into death. Her hair was curl at the ends, face young and pale, and delicate features with a pensive frown, “Do not touch my patient.”

“We need answers. Now.”

“Then use your words, you’ll get nothing from him if you beat him to death,” She stated coldly. Her blue eyes narrowed to a point before her face softened into a smile as she looked at him in bed, “My name is Doctor Wayland, you’ll be seeing quite a lot of me. Can you tell me how you’re feeling, honey?”

His bottom lip quivered.

He knew that he couldn’t speak without crying and he didn’t want to cry, not here. He shrugged his shoulders.

“It hurts, I can imagine,” She deciphered, checking his vitals and shining a light into his eyes. There was something familiar about the action, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. “I’m sure you have some questions, but is it okay if I ask mine first? We can see if you’re up for talking to them later, but right now, I need to do an assessment. Is that okay?”

She didn’t move forward until he nodded, smiling.

“I told you my name,” She said softly, looking down at her chart. “Can you tell me what your name is?”

It came like a kick in the gut, the realization.

He couldn’t remember his name.

 

Darkness was a welcomed relief.

It was something that reached out and touched his face when the panic started to set in because he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember his _name_.

The darkness stole the breath that he was oozing. It crept into the corner of his eyes and reached across his chest, it embraced him. It promised no pain and no questions, nothing that he needed to know or that he forgot as he leaned into its embrace.

In the darkness, there were blue uniforms and green slime, and the ill-defined features of a young round face that could be his or someone else. There was curly hair in the darkness and pale hands reaching out for him, a nosebleed.

As the darkness came, it left.

There was a chair in the room now and a man sitting in it.

He had white hair and an aged face. His tie was skewed slightly and there was something torn and red at the sleeve. He had a newspaper in the lap of his trousers but he wasn’t reading it, just holding it as he listened to Davis give a report, “-corroborate McKinley’s findings. I saw it, sir. Clear as day in the rubble.”

“Have there been any reports made?”

“None that we have come across yet,” He stated. “We still have people monitoring the situations, but for now, we have heard nothing. The surrounding areas are busy with the fire. We believe that he was with her, sir. She could think that he was dead.”

“I don’t like hypotheticals, Commander,” the man in the chair stated coldly. The newspaper crinkled under his hand as he smoothed out the papers. “I want facts and I want answers.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Is there anything else you wish to add, McKinley?”

“We lost Eleven, Dr. Brenner,” McKinley stated. “We were this close and there was that – _thing_ , and then the building was brought down. We lost men, my brother included in them, to an explosive. Bomb squad is still piecing everything together, but we’re all pretty damn sure this kid had something to do with that.”

“We lost Eleven, yes,” Brenner stated. “But not _all_ was lost today.”

 _Eleven people died,_ he thought to himself. His eyes were half-hooded as he listened to them talk. Eleven people died, and he survived. They must have been crushed between the concrete pieces that he kept seeing in his mind.

“Is there anything that you want to add,” Brenner drawled. It took a second to realize that he was the one being talked to, looked at, studied. “Do you know where you are?”

He was able to say confidently, “Facility. I was hurt.”

“You were,” The man said with a smile that flickered yellow, red, black. He told him that there had been an accident and that he had been hurt. He told him that they saved him and that he was lucky, “It was touch and go for a while.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know what happened?” He asked and when he shook his head, he didn’t look angry about it. He told him that he had taken a serious bump to the head and that he understood that he was confused, “Do you know who I am?”

_Should I?_

He licked his dry lips without any relief, “Do we know each other?”

“We did, once,” Brenner said softly. It wasn’t quite a smile on his face, but something softer, darker. He placed his hand on the cast over his wrist, “There was a time that you called me…Papa.”

“I’m going to make sure that you’re taken care of,” He told him, standing up. “Seven.”  

 

“You called me Seven.”

The name still tasted odd on his tongue.

There was something weighty about it as he rolled it around his mouth during doctor visits in the labs, during x-rays and blood tests. He tasted it on his lips with blueberry yogurt, but there was still something bitter about it.

There was something _there_ , but disappointing, like a treat from childhood that wasn’t as good as it was remembered.

“Is that my name?”

“Do you remember your name?”

He remembered bright flashes and yellowish undertones of curly hair and dumb hats when the lights in his room would dim into darkness. He remembered the beginnings of questions that he didn’t understand and planting his feet into dirt, drawing on the walls. He remembered small hands and small demands, pulling roughly on his arm.

When he was on the edge of sleep, sometimes he could remember someone jabbing their finger into his skin and saying, _‘you didn’t think that maybe you should have mentioned this to someone?’_

Sometimes there was an itch under his cast where he thought that there might have been a number tattooed there – _S E V E N –_ and that it was unimportant because it was a constant, always there. Sometimes he remembered a vague retelling about a distant aunt’s recklessness and being a baby.

In the night when there was nothing but the scratching of someone, _something_ trying to get into his head, he could hear a voice saying dismissive and mean, _‘if he was special than don’t you think that maybe we would have noticed by now?’_

When he was so close to sleep that he could taste the chalky residue of his pills in his mouth, he could hear a quiet uproar. He could feel the _shush_ , and the soft featherlight touch on a bruised cheek. He could feel soft blue eyes on his and a tug in his chest like love. He could hear a soft complaint that he never thought was directed at him, _‘None of that is important right now, Mike.’_

They were calling it retrograde amnesia.

Dr. Wayland said that there was a chance that he would get the memories back, get his name back, but there was also a chance that he wouldn’t. Dr. Brenner said that they would help him, take care of him.

He said, “No one has ever taken care of me before, I think.”

He asked, “Is my name Mike?”

The name didn’t sound right on his lips either. It sounded _odd_ , and _wrong_ , and demanding at times. It sounded too _big_ to be him, too important. _Michael…_

Brenner raised an eyebrow, “Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you hear that name?”

He licked his lips and shrugged his shoulders because it didn’t sound like it could have been him, not the way that _SEVEN_ did. It sounded important, like a secret worth protecting.

He shrugged his shoulders again, “I can’t remember.”

It was lie, a bad one.

There was an orangey color that curled into the corners of his vision as Dr. Brenner narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t falter until the gaze and the color faded to white. He looked down at the questions that were asked of him, a list of locations and places, and names that he didn’t know, “I thought I remembered, but I didn’t.”

“If you remember anything, you know that you’re supposed to tell me.”

He took a breath, “I know, Dr. Brenner.”

“You can call me Papa,” He told him. “I can’t take care of you if I don’t know what you remember.”

“I know.”

 

Dr. Wayland asked if there was anything that he wanted to be called. The medical bracelet on his wrist said _Doe, John, Patient Zero._

He pointed at the name, “You can call me this.”

She smiled and held out her hand, “Nice to meet you, John.”

“Nice to meet you.”

 

They called it the facility and they said that they were taking care of him. They said _don’t worry,_ and _you’re safe here,_ and _Brenner wants us to run a few more tests._

They said, _it’ll only hurt for a second._

They said, _it’s just a little shock._

They said, _bite down on this._

The first time they cut his hair, he cried.

He doesn’t really know why because he couldn’t really remember the last time that he’d _seen_ his hair, but he had. Dr. Wayland told him that Brenner wanted to start prepping him for a new kind of testing since he was getting his cast off soon and he was healthier by the day.

He wasn’t limping anymore, and his nose didn’t bleed as much as it used to. The tests could possibly get his memories back. They were going to help discover his full potential.

She said that they’d need to take a few inches off.

She asked, “Is it okay that we cut it?”

He said no.

He said, “No.”

He said, “Don’t, please. I don’t want that. Please.”

It didn’t matter because she sat the scissors next to the clippers with a nod. She left the room and Guard McKinley came in with a sickly green grin. The lights in the corners of his eyes flickered red, orange, a sickly gross yellow.

McKinley pushed him back into a chair with a hand on his collarbone. He fought off struggling and strapped restraints over his arms and forced his head down.

He cried watching brown locks fall into his lap.

He cried the second time, too.

His hair was long enough to run his fingers through it. It was floppy and fluffy, and stood up at ridiculous angles all the time. Sometimes he’d see his pale face and messy hair in the reflection of the two-way glass in the lab and he’d like what he saw, but the electrodes weren’t sticking right, and the readings were getting messed up. Brenner ordered it cut again.

He begged, “Please, I – please. Don’t.”

He begged, “Papa, don’t.”

He didn’t cry the third time even when McKinley nicked his ear with the blade. He didn’t cry a lot after that.

Dr. Brenner told him that he wanted to do more conductive experiments, that he wanted to see better results. He told him that this was the only way to get his memories back, that there was something inside of him that needed unlocked.

He told him that he was special. He _wasn’t_.

There were voices that echoed in his skull while he slept, faceless nameless human voices that told him on a repeat just how _not_ special he was. _This isn’t rocket science, you should understand this. Do you think this is good enough for college? You’re an idiot…_

Dr. Brenner said he was special.

He tapped his fingers against the number spelled out on his wrist, _SEVEN 007,_ and he spoke in a voice that was soaked in _red_ , “This makes you special.”

Red poured from his mouth and it stained his lips, and the floor. It cut the shine from his teeth as he gave him that not-quite-smile. He called it _electroshock therapy._

Dr. Wayland promised, “It won’t hurt.”

It did.

The first time that they did the experiment, the lab was overcrowded. Brenner was there, Wayland was there. McKinley and Davis, and a dozen other people that he didn’t know. He was told to be still, to breathe through his nose, to bite on _this_.

The mouth guard had the imprint of someone else’s teeth in it. It was hard plastic wedged in his mouth. It was the first and only thought he had when Dr Wayland said, “Ready.”

She said, “We’re a go in 3… 2…”

The purple of the lights above him flickered as the machine buzzed to life. There was a second, a space between a breath, where everything went white before it exploded in _color_.

Electrified neons that said _bad,_ and _run,_ and _get out, get out, get out._ Electrified shades of blue and red, and purple and green filled his vision and his mind. It curled his toes and colored deep beneath his fingernails, and he screamed.

His eyes rolled back into his head.

There was a buzz in his skin and swirling colors crowding his vision. All he could see approaching him through the haze was white hair watching, and blue eyes and soft hands touching his wrist.

“John, are you with us?” A soft feminine voice whispered in his ear. “John?”

It whispered like, _come on, come on…_ like, _are you crazy, my parents are here..._ like, _you’re an idiot…_

He blinked through color and feeling and meaning. He reached out and touched his fingertips to soft curls and a pensive frown, “Nance?”

 

In his room, where everything white and the colors crawled up the walls, but he was the only one to see it. In his room, where the real color was the red in the tissue bunched up in his hand.

Dr. Brenner asked, “Who is Nancy?”

Blue eyes and gentle touches, and the harsh ripped-Band-Aid feeling of _bullshit, bullshit, bullshit._ Book smart, and street smart, and a girl that was blurry at the edges but _there_ in his mind, _known_.

She was someone that he _knew_.

“I don’t know,” he said. He didn’t want to talk when he could feel the shock in his _teeth_. He didn’t want to tell Brenner about the jumbled up thoughts and the soft features, and the way that he knew what love and heartache was deep in his bones.

He didn’t want to say that he remembered, so he didn’t.

Dr. Brenner said, “I know you’re lying.”

He said, “How can I help you, Seven, if I don’t know what’s going on in your head.”

“My name is John,” He said even though it wasn’t. “I don’t want your help anymore.”

 

The next time he went to the lab, Dr. Wayland was gone.

McKinley said that she got tired of listening to him cry like a _bitch_. He said that she didn’t want to take care of him anymore, but it was a lie. He knew the truth.

They got rid of her.

He could see the shades of red on McKinley’s hands and the way they faded to black. He knew that Dr. Wayland was dead, and that McKinley enjoyed doing it.

“Okay.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

McKinley was being mean because he liked to make him cry, but he wasn’t going to cry now. He wasn’t going to cry just because McKinley sneered in his face and called him _Seven,_ and killed the only person that was nice to him.

“She knew you were a lost fucking cause, Seven. We all do.”

He sneered, “It’s just a matter of time before Brenner gets tired of having you around, too.”

 

They all started calling him Seven because Brenner called him Seven, because it was written on his arm in black ink.

Only Dr. Wayland ever called him John and she was gone now.

He didn’t really get it because he _knew_ that it wasn’t his name. He knew that it was what he was called a long time ago, but it had changed to something else. He didn’t really get a lot of things because no one told him, because even before he got hurt, he was kinda slow.

_You’re an idiot…_

Sometimes, he thought that he remembered people saying, _it’s a good thing you got that pretty face, pretty boy._ Sometimes he remembered people lecturing, _no one wants to hire a slacker._ Sometimes he heard, _you’re an idiot.._

_Pretty boy like you…_

He didn’t want to be Seven because he didn’t like to think about the number on his arm. When he thought too hard about the number then he thought about the girl with the sad eyes that scratched at the back of his skull, or he thought about hats and weird teeth, and it made him feel _sad_. It made him feel _bad_.

He was remembering and then they’d shock him.

Sometimes, he thought that Dr. Brenner didn’t want him to remember at all.

 

Dr. Wayland’s replacement was a man called Haden.

He had black hair and a sickly yellow smile, and something that leaked green in his steps. He called him _Sev_ , called him _friend_ , and talked too much and too loud about superheroes. He touched his fingers and his hand, and left touches that lingered too long on the small of his back and the expansion of his shoulders.

Haden liked the mouthguard.

He liked to make jokes about the bite marks and the blood left in the plastic after therapy when the only people left to laugh was McKinley. He smiled too big and for too long, making pointless comments about doe eyes and blow-me lips, and the way that he would sometimes drool.

He liked to lean in too close when Brenner stormed out of the lab unsatisfied with the results, when the only people left were Haden and him, and McKinley in the corner with his gun.

Haden liked to press up really close when he undid the restraints, drowning him in the spiced cinnamon smell of his cologne. He liked to press his dry lips against his slack jaw and sink his teeth into his bottom lip. He liked when he kissed back, when he moaned into it like he wanted it.

He would laugh, and McKinley would laugh, and they’d call him easy and a slut, and a bunch of names that didn’t _mean_ anything. He would squeeze his leg over his knee and lean in close to his ear and ask him how much he wanted it.

Then McKinley would take him to his room.

He wouldn’t cry.

He didn’t do that anymore.

 

“You’re going to get hurt.”

He was special. He was powerful.

He _had_ powers.

When he was drooling on the floor and too weak to stand, he was powerful. When he smelt of burnt flesh and spiced cinnamon, and the lights behind his eyes went technicolored and then black, he was special.

Brenner kept saying that he had powers and that they would find them. He kept saying that _all_ of them had powers, so he must have a power. Brenner didn’t get it.

He wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

His name wasn’t John and it wasn’t Seven, and he wasn’t going to explain that he already _knew_ that he had powers. He wasn’t _stupid_. He didn’t care what he got from fragmented memories or what the guards sneered at him, he wasn’t dumb. He was just slow.

It took a while, but he got _it_.

There was a flicking of colored lights at the corners of his eyes, a shade and a hue that would curl into the edges of his consciousness with words like _danger_ , or _run_ , or _bad, bad, bad._

He didn’t understand what they were because they had always been there. He didn’t understand because he was concussed and confused, and couldn’t remember his own damn name, because the colors faded when they became things he already knew.

The colors warned him. They prepared him.

The colors meant something because he _was_ special, just not in a way that really mattered. It didn’t stop what was happening. It didn’t _mean_ anything.

He had powers and it was fucking _useless._

Davis carried a sickly green shadow behind him when he brought him breakfast in the morning because he was sick and dying, he just didn’t know it yet. Haden was green in a different way, with a different kind of sickness. He was green in the way that came with nausea, with hands that wandered and pulled, and took what they wanted.

The lights in the lab used to flicker yellow when Dr. Wayland was there because yellow was safe and she used to make him feel safe. The lights flickered to a dim purple the day she did nothing when McKinley held him down and cut his hair, to the color of gross bruising on that last day he saw her.

She got hurt, she was purple.

She died. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

In the beginning, Brenner had twinkled something yellow in the corners of his eyes, but the color had faded so quickly that it was hardly there at all. He had the right words and said them in all the right ways, he made it so that it was _easy_ not to see the red for what it was. Danger.

He was evil the way that the others weren’t.

He faded from dangerous to something so much worse, to black, to death. He was the horseman of a one-manned Apocalypse.

McKinley tilted his head, “What was that?”

The plastic between his teeth torn at the side of his mouth when it was pulled out. There was blood in his teeth and static on his skin, and he burnt to the touch with something _red_ and alive, and _fire_ in his veins. He jerked backwards when McKinley reached for him, kicking out and connecting his socked foot with his hip.

McKinley grunted.

“Seven,” Brenner warned, barely looking up from his notes as he waved his hand dismissively towards both of them. “We’re done here. Take him back to his room.”

McKinley was nothing but red, _always_ blood soaked in red. His grin was always on the mean side of a razor’s edge, always a promise for pain. He was a threat in human skin, the definition of a high probability of _murder_.

McKinley was a fucking psychopath.

“I said…” Seven _spat_ blood on the ground. “I said, you’re going to get hurt.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No.”

McKinley was the kind of ruthless that came with a breaking point, a snap that didn’t _snap_ back. There was going to be a day that his cruelty would be taken too far and no one else saw the red on his hands.

McKinley’s hands used to _drip_ red when he was still a threat that needed to be figured out. His eyes would flash with anger when Davis stepped in or Brenner played favorites.

On bad days, the color used to _ooze_ from the walls when he was around. It would splatter across his vision and ache inside of his jaw. It would grow darker with his mood, but never quite got to black.

He licked his lips and met McKinley’s eyes. There was something like a smile on his face, something that felt like a thrown fist in his voice, “You’re going to die.”

_Soon._

Sometimes, there was this lingering not-quite-color. It shimmered at the edges of his vision, a rainbow trapped inside of an opal, trapped inside his eyes. It was new and pretty, but it meant bad things.

He saw it on the guard that left the day the alarms sounded. He saw it on Dr. Wayland before she left for good. He saw it now.

Dr. Brenner was watching them silently, studying.

McKinley squared his jaw. He moved quick and mean, grabbing him by the bicep so hard that it would bruise. He couldn’t be needlessly cruel in front of Brenner so he was needlessly polite, “Sorry, sir.”

“Come on,” McKinley cursed, swore, threatened. He caught him when he pushed away, holding him as the breath left him and _breathed_. “Get your feet under you, Seven. You heard the man.”

“Something bad is going to happen to you,” He repeated the words in a slur. “You’re going to fucking _die_.”

The number on his arm caught his eye and it _burnt_. It was not a tattoo but a brand that deemed him someone else, _something_ else. It meant as much as the powers. It meant nothing.

There was a jagged line that ran between the _S_ and the _E_ of SEVEN. Someone had told him that the scar was from where they had to put a rod in it when he broke the bone. He hated it.

He looked at the number and all he could thing was of the girl in his mind that scratched violently at the back of his head, that he would not let in. He thought about curly hair and weird teeth, and monsters in the darkness.

It made his hands shake and his eyes hurt, whispering into his ear in his own fucking voice, _I’m the oldest here and the fastest, I’ll detonate it. You get everybody out of here, now._

He was delirious and tired, and he smelt burnt.

McKinley’s arm was tight around his shoulders, forcing him up and forcing him forward. His other hand wrapped around the number on his wrist and told him in a deep whisper, “This is the only thing keeping you alive.”

“There’s a metal rod in my arm,” He told him. He couldn’t pull his arm out of McKinley’s grip, so he didn’t. He pressed his lips to his cheek, murmuring into the stubble, “I want to take it out.”

He bared his teeth and snagged the skin, swearing, “I’m going to beat you to death with it.”

 

There were bruises on his cheek, his ribs.

There was an ache and a fist, and a fight that he could not win and could not remember. There were black boots and a gun, and _red, red, red_ so dark that it was black.

The room was soaked in it.

Breakfast had come with the news that McKinley would not be the one taking him to the lab. Therapy came with Dr. Brenner standing on the other side of the glass, with a lot of questions that had no answers. Lab came with blood, and shock, and Haden chattering about McKinley’s car crash and the death of his wife.

“The guy got lucky, I guess,” Haden said uneasy. “Not a scratch on him.”

He smelt burnt when he was dumped back in bed. He could feel the sizzle of his synapsis frying inside of his head. He couldn’t move, he didn’t have the energy to do anything but watch the red pool under the door.

He couldn’t do anything, but watch it go black.

McKinley was shorter than Davis was.

He was younger and bulkier, and meaner. He was a blunt instrument, an all-in-one torture chamber, and he was here now.

There were tears in his eyes and anger in his hoarse voice, a breaking kind of something as he demanded answers with hands curled into his fist. He spat out words and threw down fists, and he would not stop, “How did you know?”

“What did you do to her?” He demanded.

“You _knew_ , didn’t you?” He shouted.

“You killed her!” He pounded, word after word and fist after fist until everything was punctured bloody and broken.

It was a familiar defeat.

And it ended.

The way that the other fights inside of his fractured memories had ended: with technicality

Everything was red and black, and fading into nothing inside of his eyes. It was raining fists and screaming for answers and bloody murder, and that shiny not-quite-there shimmer in his head.

McKinley wasn’t going to stop because men like him never stopped. They had to _be_ stopped. They had to be put down.

The noise was deafening.

It took a moment to realize that the warmth on his face was the splatter of actual blood, that it was someone else’s blood and not just his own. He had to blink a couple times at the whiteness threatening to overtake him.

McKinley laid beside him, half on top of him, with eyes glassy and half-open. Dead.

His head was split open, spilling onto the floor, and for a very real moment, he thought that he had done it himself. He thought that maybe his powers were violent, that there was _power_ , and he snapped from it.

“Well,” Brenner said in the doorway, voice drawling out dully as he lowered the gun in his hand. “That was something.”

 

Brenner asked if he remembered anything and he told him, _no_.

He spat blood on the floor and fought against the machines. He took the slap for what it was supposed to be. Demeaning.

Brenner asked if he was disappointed in himself and he told him, _no_.

He asked if he felt powerful and he _didn’t_.

He asked if he noticed his powers and he told him with the light fading to purple in his vision, “No.”

The color scheme jackrabbited to red when Brenner ordered the switch to be flipped, an electric shock stronger than the one before it running through him. His spine stiffened, and his head threw back, convulsing until it stopped.

Brenner asked, “How did you know about McKinley’s death?”

He asked, “How did you know that he would die?”

He ordered Haden to continue the shock therapy. He ordered him even though Haden hesitated, even though he warned him that too much could cause irreversible damage. He flipped the switch himself. 

Brenner asked, “What is your name?”

He spat back, “Fuck you.”

Sometimes, on the bad days, the lights would burn out. They’d flicker and shine with an intensity and then fade into a slow death. It probably didn’t have much to do with him. It was probably because on bad days, they did more experiments.

On bad days, the new nurses don’t make eye contact.

On bad days, Brenner’s eyes narrowed to a black point.

On bad days, they drugged him up and threw him into his room.

On bad days, he would see faces.

He would see the girl with the curly hair and the sad eyes that was always _there_ , scratching away at the back of his mind like she was trying to get inside. He thought that it hurt her when he got shocked, he thought that if he let her in than he’d let her kill him.

On the bad days when the drugs turned his mind to soup and his defenses into croutons, he doesn’t have to let her in. The gate was already open.

She would sit like a shadow at the end of his bed and stare. Her hair was always wet, and her eyes were always so big and sad, haggard the way that hardship made them. He thought that he might have known her once, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever known anything before.

He felt haunted by something that he couldn’t name, by someone.

Sometimes she would ask questions, but he never gave her answers. He never answered her because he didn’t _have_ to, because he didn’t know what to say when she would ask, “Where are you?”

He never knew what to say when she would beg, “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on, Steve.”

He didn’t ask questions because he didn’t want answers, because she wasn’t _there_. He never asked questions, but sometimes – he was lying on the floor, dripping blood on the white tiles when she appeared. He was too fucking weak to keep her away, to want to live, or breathe, or die.

He asked her, “Who is Steve?”

She opened her mouth but closed it. There were feet outside in the hall, black puddling on the floor and seeping beneath the door. They were coming.

He licked his lips and swallowed hard, asking in a whisper, “Am I Steve?”

He whispered, “Please, help. I can’t – I can’t take it anymore.”

Brenner’s shoes were shiny and black, standing in front of him. His eyes were dark, but they were not on him. He wasn’t looking at him at all, but at the girl with the wet hair, the girl that didn’t exist.

Brenner was looking at her like he saw her, and she was looking back just the same, and then everything went black. It felt like she had been ripped away from him, like she had _run_ away.

He woke up in the chair.

He woke up to the demand, “Where is the girl?”

To the demand, “What did you tell her?”

The machine buzzed, and he buzzed, and he didn’t know a thing. He told them that he didn’t know. He told them that she wasn’t real. He told them that he never said anything.

He pleaded, “Please.”

 

There was a new doctor.

He couldn’t remember the day, couldn’t remember when he forgot that he’d forgotten to keep track of the days. He couldn’t remember the old facility anymore or the name of the town that was written on the old badges. He couldn’t remember if they went to do tests yet or not, but there was a new doctor with new colors.

There was something coming and he thought, maybe this was it.

Brenner had been in his room early. He remembered that.

They had shared a big slice of chocolate cake and gross sugary icing, and he told him that they had been reunited for over a year now. He said, “Look at all the progress you’ve made. It’s remarkable.”

“Thank you.”

He said, “Tell me what your name is.”

“I am called Seven.”

He asked, “Have you had any dreams about the girl?”

“No, Papa.”

Brenner had said, “Good.”

He ran his hand over the soft tuffs of brown hair that had been able to grow and murmured something about haircuts soon. His murmuring turned to humming when he was asked about the rainbow room, saying instead, “You should rest, Seven. We’re starting new treatments today.”

He knew that treatments just meant experiments, meant the chair and the electricity, and the taste of blood burnt on his tongue. He knew that was going to throw up the cake when they went to the lab later and he knew that he wasn’t going to the rainbow room, that he needed to rest until the room stopped shaking in flashing neon lights.

He didn’t know what neon meant when the shock wasn’t there.

Brenner asked before he left, “What colors are the lights right now?”

He shrugged, “Pink.”

There was a new doctor today and no one told him about it.

The doctor that had opened the door to his room was a young short woman in a lab coat that folded down over her hands. Her face was too soft not to be new, too wide-eyed and horrified when she looked inside. Her mouth dropping open, colored blue with surprise and then green with _disgust_.

She wasn’t jaded yet.

The lights in the hallway flickered pink behind her.

The color curled into his vision as she took a step out of the room. She looked down the hall and then back inside, cursing softly to herself before hissing into her sleeve, “ _Kali_.”

She repeated, “Kali, come in.”

She cursed softly under her breath when she got a lack of response, “Shit.”

She asked, “Do you have a number on you or something?”

He didn’t answer her question straight away. He didn’t usually get asked questions that weren’t by Dr. Brenner or Haden, or the guards that had to make sure that he’d given back all his eating utensils. He licked the sugar residue from the corner of his mouth before saying, “Seven.”

“Let me see it.”

The lights faded back to a florescent white when she walked further into the room, looking back towards the door one last time before she crouched down next to the bed. He could have kicked her if he wanted to, could have screamed so that someone heard him.

He didn’t move at all.

He barely flinched when she touched his arm, unfolding it from his lap and looking down at his wrist. Her fingers were soft as they ghosted over the _S E V E N 0 0 7._

Her touch was featherlight and barely there at all, tickling over the scar that cut between the S and the E. She followed the silvery raised skin up to a newer scar that bisected the line in an awkward _t._

He remembered making that one himself.

He remembered scratching and scratching at the same spot on his wrist with a fork until it spilled red, until it was deep enough to stay forever and deep enough to hurt. He couldn’t remember his reasoning anymore.

He didn’t know _why_ he wanted to leave the scar, but he remembered the guards, and Brenner, and being dragged to the lab. He didn’t remember much after that.

“You’re one of them,” She whispered in awe, looking surprised by her own words when she told him that he needed to follow her. She told him to be quick and to quiet, to stay close to her side and run if she said to run.

She ran her fingers into her hair and sighed, “Okay, I – sorry. I’m Dottie. What’s your name?”

He blinked, eyes flickering down to the number, “Seven.”

“I meant your real – it doesn’t matter,” She shook her head, grabbing his sleeve and pulling on it. “I promise, I’m going to help you.”

He followed her, let her lead him in a direction that he’d never walked before. She pulled him further and further away from the labs and Brenner to hallways that weren’t being used.

There was a walkie-talkie shoved up the inside of her sleeve and she spoke into it in whispers, “Guys, there’s been a change of plans. Don’t bitch at me, okay. We need to get out of here, now. Trust me.”

His mind whispered, _you need to get out, now._

He shifted his weight on his feet and thought about running. He curled his toes against the tiled floor and forced his hands to uncurl from their fists. He didn’t go anywhere.

The walkie-talkie was nothing but static before a gruff voice boomed over it, “Damn it. I’ll get you. Kali, can you handle the rest of it?”

“Of course.”

“You’re supposed to say _over_ ,” He mumbled, not really sure where the words had come from, but he knew that like it was fact. Sometimes he said things and Dr. Brenner called it muscle memory, an automatic response. He said that would change, it was just a slow process.

He hated when it happened because it made him feel like two separate people – Seven and _someone._

Dottie was nodding to herself and then at him. She gave half-assed directions before telling him, “We just have to wait, okay. The big guy will be here soon and he’ll get us out of here.”

They stood there, and he didn’t really know what to do because he didn’t want to _leave_. He wasn’t supposed to, but she was dressed like a doctor and it was a lot easier to just pretend that she was.

This was _wrong_ , and she wavered between shades of an anxiety-ridden blue and he didn’t know what to do with _that_. She wasn’t giving him orders, wasn’t hurting him.

She wasn’t really doing anything, but touching his arm sometimes. He didn’t like that, but it wasn’t the worst thing that a doctor has done to him. So, he didn’t mind.

He didn’t pull his arm away when she touched her fingers down over the numbers again. He didn’t flinch when she looked down at his wrist like if she didn’t, the number would melt away. She admitted, “I hope I’m not wrong about this.”

She asked, “Have you been in here for a long time?”

He didn’t answer.

The lights kept flickering over their heads and he was pretty sure that he was the only one that could see it so, it was a warning. There was something coming that flashed from white to yellow, to red, to maroon, to nearly black in the center.

The darkness was spreading in the corner of his eyes. It was mutating and _climbing_ , and eating up his vision until it left him completely. There was shadow and a man that walked from it.

There was the shadow, and the man, and the shadow of the man that was somehow so much darker than anything he’d ever seen before. It shifted and mutated, overtaking the Shadow Man with the black veins crawling up his face and disappearing beneath the hoodie covering his eyes.

The Shadow Man stopped a step too close.

There was a curse coloring his words but the colors was _black_. It all died a silent breath on the air as the hoodie was pushed back. Seven saw blue eyes and curly hair that was brown at the ends and blond at the roots.

_Am I dreaming, or is that you?_

The Shadow man reached out suddenly and quickly, touching his black fingertips to the sharp paleness of Seven’s cheekbone. His touch was quick, but _there_ and everything went black. It pitched into an unseeing darkness. It dropped him into something that was so _wrong_ it felt Upside Down.

He didn’t think he’d ever see again.

He remembered something spider-like, a man with curls in his hair and rats at his feet, a command of something worse. He remembered something like a laugh that tore out his throat and razor-sharp teeth, _I knew there was a fire in you after all._

There was a hand on his shoulder and he struck out hard with a fist. He met something fleshy and heard a curse. He struck out again blind in the darkness that only he could see, and his arm was grabbed. He was jerked forward and shoved backwards, and a fist smashed into his nose once, twice…

 

He woke up in a room that was not the facility.

There was stripes on the wall and a bed beneath his head with roses embroidered on the comforter. The sheets were stiff and untucked, bunched up under his neck uncomfortably. There was a clock beside his head that flashed _00:00_ and noise all around him, people.

There were colors everywhere – new ones with new meanings that needed to be understood and blinked away. There was a pink on the walls and neon colored _blues,_ and _reds_ , and a sickly infected blackness.

His eyes shifted around room, from face to face and voice to voice. He recognized Dottie but not the man with the mohawk or the girl with the afro. He followed the wisps of neon colors on the air to where they accumulated at the feet of an electrified woman.

She was talking.

She had her arms crossed over a forgotten lab coat. Her hair still held the signs of a bun even though it was let down and shook loose. There was a piercing in her nose and a frustration in her British accent, “How are we going to get back in there? It’s too risky to use the same path.”

There was red on her hands, but pink around her head.

Neither colors faded much when he blinked.

Dottie was addressing her now, voicing curling into a whine, “I couldn’t just _leave_ him there, Kali. I know I messed up the plan, but you would do the same.”

“I did not say leave him there.”

The guy with the mohawk asked, “But did we have to _take_ him with us?”

Both women stated, “Yes.”

Dottie added, “I wasn’t the one that punched him either.”

“I know.”

There was a noise coming from the dinky ensuite bathroom and then the door was opening. What crawled out was the darkness that had _ate_ his vision away in the corridor. It left him blind to be _punched_.

And from the darkness, the Shadow Man walked out.

Seven had never seen someone that’s light was just so – black. It was not a light at all but a consistent absence of it. It was bad. It was something otherworldly, something _wrong_. It made him want to curl away from it, to run from it.

There was a hand pressed to his chest.

He hadn’t even realized that he had started to get up, but he must have because Kali was there next to him. Everybody else was just staring with mild interest or _intense_ interest, even the Shadow Man in his corner.

Kali’s fingernails were chipped black, pressing a calloused warmth into his pounding heart. His body relaxed underneath her, like it realized that she was not a threat before his mind did.

She said soft but urgently, “My name is Kali. I’m a friend of Jane’s.”

“Who?”

Her hand was seeping red light onto him.

It was tainting him with something like blood, like danger, like bad. He didn’t understand what the pink color circling her head meant, but he knew what red meant.

She was dangerous.

His body was telling him that he didn’t need to be concerned about it. He just needed to _know_.

She sighed, “She said that you wouldn’t remember.”

She tried anyways, “Eleven. Jane Hopper.”

 _Hopper_ , the word floated into his head and nosedived into nothing. He shook his head, “Sorry.”

He wasn’t at the facility anymore and he didn’t know anybody name Jane or Hopper. He didn’t know anything at all that wasn’t four white walls and a walk to the alb. He didn’t know Kali either and he didn’t want to know the Shadow Man.

He shivered when he pushed off the wall and stepped forward. There was a sharpness to the grin that overtook his black veined face, something almost _giddy,_ fleshy and young, and memorable in the curled hair and the blue eyes, and the tongue that licked over his bottom lip.

He grinned like there was a joke in it, repeating something that Seven had thought to himself earlier, “Is that you, Harrington, or am I dreaming?”

_Harrington. Hopper. Jane._

There was something that he was supposed to say back. He could feel the words in his mouth, on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t know what they were supposed to be. He didn’t say anything, just blinked.

He looked back to Kali because she was pink, and she wouldn’t hurt him. It didn’t stop him from seeing the Shadow Man’s smile fall, “Hey, Har-“

“He doesn’t remember, Billy,” Kali told her. She gave him a hard look before turning back towards Seven, _Harrington._ The name licked at the back of his mouth, something that tasted familiar but – not exactly new, just _there_.

He blinked, “Where is Dr. Brenner?”

She told him, “He will never hurt you again.”

There were too many lights and colors, and feeling that were crawling up his throat and heating behind his eyes. There was _too_ much and it felt like he was being electrocuted without the shock.

Brenner never did this to him.

Brenner kept the number of people in the lab limited and gave him white walls, and no windows, and drugs for when it was too much. It was _too much_.

There were colors seeping up from the shag carpet. There were colors oozing down the walls and puddling at everybody’s feet. There were noises outside and colors through the peephole in the door. It was too much.

He felt like he was missing something.

He felt like he was going to rip at the seams.

He shoved hard and Kali slipped from the side of the bed with surprise. He scrambled backwards and tripped onto his feet, taking a lamp off the table in the process. He reached for the door and found the doorknob missing, and the colors missing, and – “This isn’t real.”

He breathed out the words and everything faded back slowly into the room that they’d been in. Kali looked at him and told him, “You’re one of us. You have abilities and I have abilities too.”

She held out her arm and showed him the number, _008._

She said, “You’re my brother and I’m your sister.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“Too bad,” She told him coldly.

She asked him questions about Brenner, and the facility, and a place called Hawkins and something called Starcourt. She asked him about monsters and fighting, and a little girl name Jane.

She asked if he was hungry. He wasn’t.

She told him that he could sleep. He didn’t.

He asked, “Can I leave?”

The Shadow Man said, “No.”

Kali had to use the payphone down the road and the others were hungry. They all filed out in a row until all that was left was him and the Shadow Man, and Kali’s words, “Be gentle with him.”

The door shut and Seven asked, “What are you?”

“Human.”

“ _What_ are you?” He asked again, shaking his head. No one carried that much black around with them that was human. It wasn’t possible. “You’re – different.”

“So are you, pretty boy,” He drawled. “We used to know each other in a different lifetime.”

Squeaky shoes. A weight against his back, breath against his neck with a grin. Humid night and red shirts, and fists in his face, a laugh in the air. Flickering lights and burnt food, and something not quite right.

Black veins. An infection. A button to press. A building that fell.

McKinley’s voice, _‘You are not going to fucking believe this, Paul.’_

“I don’t know you.”

It was a denial to a hundred different things flickering down in his gut, a photo album of someone else’s life with his same goddamn face. He shook his head, “No, I don’t.”

“What? What, you think that you _lived_ in that lab your whole life?” He asked, voice pitched violently into something angry. “You think that they _cared_ about you, that you _meant_ anything. They fucking- they _tortured_ Kail, stole her from her family and they did the same fucking thing to you.”

“You’re brainwashed-“

“No, I’m not. I know – I know you I am.”

“You know a _number_ ,” He spat, shoving his hands violently into his pockets and pulling out a folded piece of paper. He shook it out and shoved it into his face, “You’re _Steve Harrington._ ”

The picture printed on the paper was faded and torn at the edges, but it was his face – fuller, livelier, missing. It was big hair and big eyes, and a real smile under the words MISSING, last seen July 04, 1985. _Steve Harrington_.

It was easy to deny it, “That’s not me.”

“It’s your fucking face,” He said. “Starcourt came down because you pressed a _button_. They thought you were dead, the kids, Hopper. They blamed _me_. No one found a body and that made it worse.”

He laughed something dark and humorless, shaking his head incredulous, “I thought I ate you like the – the fucking lifeguard. I got possessed by that _thing_ because _you_ fucked up the first time. It makes you fucking _hungry,_ and nothing is _good_ enough so you just – you eat everything. I got blamed for something that I couldn’t control, and you-“  

“You don’t get to deny this shit because you don’t remember it,” He snapped, pushing up against him. He curled his hands into his shirt and shook him, “Fucking remember, Harrington. _Remember_.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?” The question was angry, snapping like rows and rows of monstrous teeth. “We _saved_ you! Harrington, we saved you! _I_ saved you.”

“Thank you.”

The Shadow Man was named _Billy,_ and he called him _Steve,_ and there was something inside of both of them that was cracking and shuddering, and lost. They were _young_. They were teenagers and they both were _old_ and broken in their souls.

His name was Seven.

It was _never_ Seven – the S E V E N with the scarred _t_ in the middle spelled STEVEN. He couldn’t remember why he made the scar, but it felt suddenly like he had been trying to remember.

He thought hard about curly hair and blue eyes, and the something kind of delicate that he was so sure that he loved, that came to him in dreams and touched his face. He thought about long fingers and soft touches, and whispering the words, _I love you._

Whispering, _you’re an idiot, Steve Harrington._

There was something kind of crushing about being in love and not remembering, and thought that maybe the darkness that shadowed Billy’s eyes, the hurt had to do with that. Love was a powerful, all-consuming things, and to be forgotten…

He pressed his mouth against the heat of Billy’s.

He licked at Billy’s bottom lip and into his mouth the way that Haden taught him, the way that he said that men like, _yeah, yeah, just like that, baby._ He hummed into the kiss, pressing closer and closing eyes to the odd taste of coffee and candy on his tongue.

Billy went stiff with surprise and then melted into it, kissing back hesitantly and then all at once. There was something that clung like desperation to the clash of tongue and teeth, and too much spit. There was something _blue_ that shoved him back against the wall and rolled his hips, something – not quite right.

The kissed, even at its softest, didn’t line up to the kiss that pressed into his dreams at night. It was different, rougher at the edges.

Billy put his hand on his hip, holding him there as he licked further back into his mouth. He rolled his hips into his and sighed into the kiss, and Seven – he knew how to do this.

He counted in his head up to ten before moaning softly into the kiss. He counted three more seconds before shivering and Billy responded the way that Haden responded, just meaner and with more enthusiasm.

His bottom lip was swollen and bitten red when Billy pulled back, his hand staying on his hip. His body was stilled up so close to his own that he could feel the heartbeat.

Billy grinned, breathing out. It was almost cute until something seemed to catch up with him and he pulled back. His voice was bland, “What the hell, Harrington.”

He didn’t know.

He didn’t have to answer either because Kali was coming back. He could see the trails of pink through the window and he whispered just as much, whispered, “I’m sorry. I won’t tell anybody.”

Billy just looked sick for a second, and then flashed red inside of black. He swung out hard and caught him in the gut, spitting, “Fuck you, Harrington.”

 

Mick was driving.

Seven – _no, Steve, your name is Steve –_ woke up screaming in the middle of the night and someone at the seedy hotel called the cops. Kali used her powers to get them out of there, and now Mick was driving.

He got the first shift.

Steve thought maybe that he used to know how to drive. He asked Billy about it and Billy told him, “Go fuck yourself.”

Billy sat in the passenger seat – he had the second shift. Dottie told Steve that Billy drove too fast, that one time he got the van to go over a hundred _uphill_.

Sometimes when everybody was asleep, and it was just him and Kali, and Billy behind the wheel, she would put press her fingers to scarring at Steve’s temples She would press their foreheads together even though it didn’t really do anything, and she would whisper, “They didn’t want you to remember.”

He promised, “I won’t.”

Though, sometimes he did remember.

More and more, he remembered what Starcourt was. He remembered stupid blue uniforms and monsters, and a division of the military. He remembered blue eyes and blond hair, and black veins, and someone saying, _we got to get the antidote to Billy._ He remembered someone saying, _the place is rigged to blow, we can end all of this._

He remembered saying, _I’ll do it. Get everybody out of here before the place comes down._ He remembered blue eyes and brown curls, kissing him softly on the lips before saying, _you’ll be killing yourself._

He remembered his own dumb sports metaphor, _sometimes you got to sacrifice the play to win the game, Nance. Let me do this, please._

He asked, “Did I play a sport.”

“Basketball,” Billy said, eyes on the road in front of them. “You sucked ass at it.”

That made Steve laugh for some reason.

They stopped at a different seedy hotel when the lights in the distant got dark and scary, and Steve told them that he _knew_ something bad was going to happen. There was a basketball court across the street at the park and he was kind of shocked when Billy put his hoodie on over his veiny face and asked, “Wanna shoot some hoops, pretty boy?”

He nodded.

He wasn’t very good, but Billy wasn’t very good either. He crowded up too close when Steve had the ball, breathed over his shoulder with taunts and tripped over his feet when he moved suddenly. It was – weird, like a pair of shoes that didn’t quite fit comfortably but still fit.

It was a little – _odd_.

He kind of liked it.

They crossed the Indiana state line when Billy told him that he had a step-sister. She was fifteen now. He told him that Steve protected her once, that he didn’t have to but he did. He said that was the kind of man that Steve Harrington was – a protector.

“They called you _mom_ a lot,” He told him. Steve wasn’t sure if he was fucking with him or not.

They were a few hours outside of Hawkins, Indiana and Steve could sometimes point out places that he thought he knew. He was sitting in the passenger seat, and Billy was driving. He pointed at a little hideaway diner and said, “I think I threw up there once.”

He pointed at a sign advertising god and corn at the next stop, “I remember that. I know I do.”

“It would be pretty hard to forget, pretty boy.”

When they stopped for gas and everybody got out of the van to stretch their legs, Steve stayed inside. He was promised Oreos for being the lookout, but all he was really watching was Billy get back into the van.

He didn’t smile the way that he typically did when he looked at Steve. He sighed and said, “Pretty boy, I need to talk to you.”

He said, “This is as far as I go.”

“Wh-what?”

“I don’t go into in Hawkins anymore,” He stated and he wasn’t going to budge. He told him, “There’s too much bad blood in that place. I was – basically I was run out of town in all the ways that matter and Heather – her parents are still and I can’t. I can’t make the rest of the journey with you, babe.”

It hurt.

Billy was different from Mick, and Dottie, and Axel. He was different than Kali and the vague dreamy memories that he had about his past. He was very solid and here.

He understood the way that Kali wouldn’t open herself up to. Billy was an old memory and a new one, and he didn’t – “I want you come with me.”

For the first time in a long time, it felt like was losing something. He didn’t want Billy to leave. He told him so, “Please, just – just stay with me.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Billy insisted, his voice breaking. He scribbled down the address to some hotel just around the corner from where they were now. He told him, “I’ll be here a week.”

He doesn’t say, _if it doesn’t work out, come find me._

He doesn’t say, _you don’t need me._

He doesn’t say, _goodbye._

He tried his finger down scarred shaped _t_ on his arm and whispered, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Harrington.”


End file.
